ABSTRACT
When I first wrote this book in 1991 I was very concerned with a number of disturbing educational trends operating in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The following is the preface I wrote delineating those concerns and their relationship to Teachers As Researchers:
I am a teacher. I want to do good work. Having attended, worked in, and visited many schools in North America, I believe that at the end of the twentieth century teaching is not good work. As I listen to teachers talk about their jobs or watch hierarchical interactions between administrators and teachers, I sense a crisis in the teaching profession. Never sure that I am characterizing the crisis accurately, I listen intensely to the brilliant teachers who talk to me of resigning, to the brilliant teacher education students who can’t get hired or who have trouble in student teaching because of their intelligence, and to the great teachers who have worked invisibly for years, rarely rewarded for their dedication.
